Week of 3/2

Deformed piece

This week I was able to make a lot of progress on the physical design of the rover. At the start of the week I noticed that I needed to finish cutting the long legs of the rover. However before I was able to do that, I needed to create a new file with a hole through the piece as it was where I would be able to attach the differential to it once finished with assembly. Once this step was complete, I loaded the new file onto the thumb drive and went into the machine shop. As I was given help last time I used the water jet, it was my first time using the machine by myself. After getting the machine set up, it was time to begin printing. After finding a viable spot to cut out the pieces on the aluminum, I started the first cut. However on the first attempt it did not cut all the way through so I tried running it again, however after fully cutting through the jet had cause a slight deformity on the aluminum prompting me to redo the cut. After fixing the issue, I was able to get both of the pieces cut out correctly.

After this was done it was time to finish attaching all of the aluminum parts onto the rover. After taking off all of the old acrylic parts (which required a lot of effort) I was able to put all of the pieces into place. For some I had to use a hammer to get them in properly, however some of the other pieces slide in tightly from just a little bit of force. After swapping out the acrylic for aluminum I have noticed an even stronger structural improvement, with the wheels sitting perfectly vertical without any tilt. In the final part of my week I spent a little bit of time beginning to doing my schematic so that I will be able to create a circuit board for the rover and finish to project.